CHAPTER NINE: Beneath the Hollow Throne
The whispers began at dawn.
Not in words — in silences. In halls where servants no longer laughed. In kitchens where the pots boiled too quietly. Even the birds in the Lotus Courtyard began to nest elsewhere, abandoning the beams of the central roof.
Liora noticed. She always noticed.
She did not mention it aloud, not even to Ami. But she walked slower. Stepped lighter. Watched the shadows on the stone tiles at dusk, where the light did not fully reach.
They were changing.
And they were watching.
---
The Queen's court grew restless.
Lady Wen had retreated into her scrolls. Lady Hua, once bold, now smiled too widely at no one in particular. Even Elira's sharp tongue softened, as if tasting something bitter in the air.
And the King?
He had not visited the harem in over twelve nights.
Rumors stirred that he had taken to meditating alone in the ancient chamber beneath the Hall of Ancestors — a room untouched since the reign of the previous monarch, sealed after a fire decades ago.
Liora did not believe in coincidence.
---
It was a silver thread that led her to the truth.
Literally.
Tucked into the folds of her robe one morning: a length of thread wound tight around a sliver of bone — carved with the shape of a moth.
No note. Just a small smear of ash.
She said nothing, but kept it in her sleeve.
Later, she returned to the Outer Archives, where the oldest scrolls were kept under lock and dust. The eunuch keeper, an old man with cloudy eyes, opened the gate without a word and walked away.
Inside, she found a record barely intact — a list of rituals once performed at coronations long before the current dynasty. Blood readings. Dream fasting. Offerings buried beneath the throne.
And something more.
The Chamber of Listening.
Closed since the fire that killed the old Empress. Sealed in silence.
But it had another name, half-burned at the edge of the parchment:
"The Root Hall."
---
That night, Liora traced the path with bare feet and a silent heart.
Through the eastern gardens. Past the cracked koi fountain. Down the old stairs behind the Winter Bell Tower — a place servants no longer swept, where lanterns refused to stay lit.
There, beneath an arch of rotting cedar, she found a door.
Iron-bound. Half open.
She stepped inside.
---
The air was colder.
Not from wind — from memory.
The walls were lined with mirrors, all covered in faded cloth. At the center of the chamber: a stone basin, dry but marked with old, dark stains. Around it, seven prayer stools, each facing inward.
And on the far wall, carved in a language older than the palace itself:
"What is buried beneath the throne must listen, even in sleep."
Liora touched the stone with her fingertips.
It was warm.
---
She knelt, not in worship — in thought.
This place had not been made for gods. It had been made for kings afraid of what they could not see. For queens who feared what bloodlines might awaken. For servants who served more than one master.
Something remembered here.
She closed her eyes.
And in that silence, she heard it:
Not a voice.
A breath.
In.
Out.
From beneath the basin.
As if the palace itself was exhaling in sleep.
---
When she emerged, the door shut behind her without touch.
She did not run.
She did not cry.
She looked up at the stars and knew two things.
First: the Queen feared this place.
Second: someone had brought her here on purpose.
Not to warn her.
To prepare her.
---
The next morning, a folded strip of linen appeared on her table.
No name.
Just three symbols, hand-inked in the corner:
根 — 聆 — 忍
Root. Listen. Endure.
---
Liora folded it into her sleeve.
She had no crown. No guards. No title of favor.
But she had eyes.
She had memory.
And now, she had the beginnings of something deeper — older than ambition, older than the throne.
Something buried.
And waiting.